Showing a picture of an African woman holding in her hands something looking like a thick bamboo stick, Gordon said that even though the woman can’t read and doesn’t know how to use the Internet, through the device she’s holding she can report news from her village, which is then processed and published online.

Such pioneering techniques are revolutionizing the way we think about citizen journalism, which is based on open publishing, collaborative editing and distributed content.

RIA Novosti, the publisher of The Moscow News, hopes that its pilot “You Reporter” project will grow exponentially over the next five years.

“I expect that by the end of 2011, we will have up to 5,000 citizen journalists and over the next five years, their number will increase to 1 million,” RIA Novosti editor-in-chief Svetlana Mironyuk told the Future Media Forum, which was held at the agency’s new Multimedia Press Center on Friday, the 70th anniversary of its founding.

The project allows anyone to upload their photos, videos and stories to the Youreporter.ru website where the materials are selected, edited and posted by RIA Novosti journalists.

“The journalist’s monologue is turning into a conversation with bloggers, citizen journalists and dwellers of social networks,” Mironyuk said.

“We expect the number of participants to grow to1 million by 2016 by means of active work with people from Russia’s regions and journalists [around the world],” Natalya Yamnitskaya, a curator of the project, told The Moscow News. “The broad scope of the audience will allow us to get closer to the reader. Being able to tell people about what is happening in their district or across the street will allow us to overcome the barrier of the viewer being distant from the events on the other side of the screen. This will give us a huge advantage in the media space.”

The project is aimed at providing independent, accurate and up-to-date information, allowing readers to take active part in the news-making process.

RIA-Novosti editors said that all uploaded files would be checked for authenticity, and that a special token would be used to confirm that all information is verified by the agency’s editorial team.

The agency says that 6,000 materials have been uploaded so far, and that more than 3,000 have been published.

“The essence of citizen journalism is that everybody find out what it’s like to be a journalist,” said Denis Voronin, a participant in the You Reporter project. “Citizen journalists don’t depend on the editorial team and can plan their work – where to go and what to write – themselves,” Voronin told The Moscow News.

“Citizen journalists are often the first to arrive at the scene of an incident … [He or she] can quickly prepare a story from the scene and immediately send the material to the editorial team, where the interesting materials can be published on newsfeeds.”

“This is how sensations are born,” said another citizen journalist, Alex Goltsman. “And it’s an advantage for the media themselves, as it builds ratings.”

“I often arrive on the scene and immediately send photos,” Voronin said. “The editorial team often has information but no photographs. This is citizen journalism – when people without any special training who don’t work in the media become reporters, the main thing here is desire and an interest to cover news stories.”

“We have an idea that we can work together as an organization, not as amateurs, having a website and a room where we would work and prepare materials for the media,” he said. “We would teach the newcomers what we know. This would enable citizen journalism move to a new semi-professional level.”

But experts at the Future Media Forum insisted that citizen journalism would never replace professional journalism.

Thomas Kent, deputy editor-inchief at The Associated Press, told the forum that the main difference between professional and citizen journalists is that the former usually base their reports and viewpoints on fact, and are not eager to express their personal point of view – as opposed to bloggers and citizen journalists.

My Mission

Followers

To Change The World

Exclusive Area 51 Pictures: Secret Plane Crash Revealed

The CIA created Area 51 in 1955 to test and develop top secret U.S. military projects in the remote Nevada desert. More than 50 years later, the base still doesn't officially exist and appears on no public U.S. government maps.

Royal Families And New World Order

According to Braun, four cards which would be drawn and laid out in order. The goal is to install fear in people and have them conform to the wishes of the elite. They will impose their own ideologies and realities on the mass populous just as they did with the War on Terror. These cards or covert plans will help establish the NWO.

Fukushima Radiation: A Soft-Kill Operation

Arnold Gunderson, a 39-year veteran of the nuclear industry, stated: “I absolutely disagree with the scientists who say that Fukushima’s not going to hurt anyone. The numbers I’ve seen, from reputable scientists, are that Fukushima is going to kill 200,000 from increased cancers over the next 50 years.”

The People vs. Goldman Sachs

To fully grasp the case against Goldman, one first needs to understand that the financial crime wave described in the Levin report came on the heels of a decades-long lobbying campaign by Goldman and other titans of Wall Street, who pleaded over and over for the right to regulate themselves.

Vaccines engineered for the WHO, IMF, World Bank, UN and U.S. as a genocidal bio-weapon

On January 29, 2010 the richest man in the United States and chairman of Microsoft, Bill Gates declared, “We must make this the decade of vaccines” Bill and Melinda Gates announced on that day that their foundation will commit $10 billion over the next 10 years to help research, develop and deliver vaccines for the world’s poorest countries.

20 Signs That A Horrific Global Food Crisis Is Coming

In case you haven't noticed, the world is on the verge of a horrific global food crisis. At some point, this crisis will affect you and your family. It may not be today, and it may not be tomorrow, but it is going to happen.